


The Devil Behaving Badly (the Better Angels of His Nature remix)

by iberiandoctor (Jehane)



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergence, Chloe Decker Finds Out, F/M, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Devil Reveal, Lucifer Redemption, Pining, Protective Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Reveal, Wing Grooming, Winged Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-22
Updated: 2020-10-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26698498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: In the same way as mortals have original sin, angels― even fallen ones, like the Devil Himself ― have inherent angelic virtues: a compulsion toward neatness, a protective streak a mile wide, a magpie’s instinct for shiny things. Having his wings cut off in the beginning allowed Lucifer to set these original virtues aside ― but now that the wings are back, so are the better angels of his nature.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 22
Kudos: 366
Collections: LUCIFER_FICS_, Lucifer (TV) Foxy's Collection of other FanFic she liked., Remix Revival 2020





	The Devil Behaving Badly (the Better Angels of His Nature remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mere_Mortifer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_Mortifer/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Angelic Behaviour 101](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18360275) by [Mere_Mortifer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere_Mortifer/pseuds/Mere_Mortifer). 



> CW for blood, temporary mutilation, references to drug use and angelic self-harm.

**[1] Not Enemies but Friends**

It started exactly how things with Lucifer usually started: — deceptively innocent on the surface, and then escalating more quickly than a Ron Bundy meme or the latest Kayne West Twitter storm.

One moment they were on a routine stake-out in the alley outside _No Exit_ , a dive bar on the South Side which was the scene of their latest case. Lucifer had been unusually quiet — normally he had as much patience with routine detective work as a pre-schooler on a sugar high (albeit a pre-schooler with a post-doctorate in smarmy fake-British sexual innuendo) — and Chloe had been able to focus her full attention on the bar’s exit door. She definitely wasn’t distracted by the sprawl of Lucifer’s three thousand dollar Prada suit in the front seat of their rental car, or the line that the bad lights of the alley traced down his cheek. 

The next moment, he’d suddenly blurted out, “Detective, I should go.”

She turned to look at him. He was squirming uncomfortably in his seat. A bead of perspiration trailed down one chiseled cheekbone. This was definitely unusual; she’d never seen him work up a sweat, let alone look anything other than perfectly put together. 

“Lucifer, are you feeling okay?”

His pearly white teeth flashed in the most fake smile she’d ever seen. “Of course I am! Perfectly well, never been better — I need to be elsewhere, possibly five minutes ago.”

Was he faking a sudden attack of boredom, or was something wrong? Chloe hated that she had no clue. She said, cautiously, “I hate to break it to you, but we’re on a _stakeout_? If we leave, we might blow our cover with the bad guys. Can it wait?”

“Why don’t _you_ wait, Detective,” he snapped, and opened the car door and quite literally vanished. Chloe had never seen anyone move that fast, including frat boys rushing on Spring Break and off-duty cops homing in on the nearest bar. 

Hardly able to believe her eyes, she, too, got out of the car. The dark alley was lined with vehicles down one side and garbage cans on the other; it held exactly zero infuriatingly handsome nightclub owners slash part-time consulting civilian detectives.

A white feather drifted from the sky onto her palm. It looked too big to be a pigeon’s, but Chloe had lived in L.A. for long enough that she wouldn’t be surprised if there were large mutant birds roosting in this part of the city.

“Goddamn it, Lucifer!” 

She narrowly stopped herself from pounding her fists in frustration on the car roof. Damn, she should know better than to take Lucifer’s vanishing act this personally. In fact, she was supposed to be done with any more-than-professional feelings for her part-time partner, especially after the latest stunt he’d pulled.

He’d asked her to come over to his place last month, promising, _“I want you to know the truth about me,”_ and then he’d tapped out, same as always. This time the asshole couldn’t even pretend he’d been kidnapped and left for dead in the desert.

The back exit door opened, and a burly man in a leather jacket stepped out into the alley. He squinted at Chloe.

“Hey, aren’t you —?”

Terrific: here was their main suspect, Michael Ortega. Some covert stakeout this was turning out to be. Sighing, Chloe reached into her pocket and raised her badge into the light.

“L.A.P.D. We have a couple of questions for you.”

“No way you’re taking me in,” Ortega said, and instead of ducking back into the bar, he pulled what looked like a switchblade from inside his sleeve and charged down the stairs towards her.

He wasn’t moving particularly quickly, though, and Chloe had plenty of time both to draw her own Beretta and to roll her eyes at his clumsiness. “Seriously? Stop, or I’ll put a hole in this ugly jacket!”

“Nuh-uh,” Ortega said, continuing to advance at medium speed. Chloe planted her feet and cocked her weapon and considered where to place her shot — which was when a blur of black and white rushed past her, barreled into Ortega, and knocked him clear across the alley. 

Garbage bins fell over, clanging; Ortega screamed like a teenage B.T.S. fan. Chloe holstered her weapon and rushed over to see Lucifer standing over the fallen mobster, his lean body outlined in the night. 

She grabbed hold of Lucifer to stop him from squeezing the guy’s head off like a Pez dispenser. His arm was like an iron bar, she might as well be trying to hold back the tide on Laguna Beach. 

Where the actual fuck had Lucifer beamed down from? And could anyone have moved that fast? Chloe made herself focus on the most important thing, which was: “Stop it, you’re choking him!”

Slowly, reluctantly, Lucifer let go. She realized he was shaking; she couldn’t remember if she’d ever seen him tremble like this before. 

Ortega slumped back, coughing frantically. “Jesus Christ!” he panted in between gasps for air.

“Sorry, wrong number,” Lucifer said, with a feral grin. Chloe shoved herself between him and Ortega; as she pulled her cuffs out, she couldn’t help feeling she had to protect the perp from Lucifer, who’d suddenly and inexplicably turned into some comic-book supervillain with super-speed.

“I could have handled him myself, you know,” she told Lucifer. “Especially after you ran off and blew our cover. This kind of overreaction? It isn’t like you.”

“If you really think that, Detective, then I’m afraid you don’t really know me at all,” Lucifer said, huffily. 

When Chloe turned around, she saw he’d vanished again. Those mutant pigeons had left even more white feathers in his wake. 

This time, Chloe couldn’t even work up the energy to curse. It had been a night of extreme Lucifer weirdness, and she suspected this was only the beginning.

**[2] When Passion Strains**

Lucifer Morningstar, once most beloved of all of God’s angels and now the prodigal King of Hell, swept into his penthouse apartment from six hundred feet above the Sunset Strip. 

He’d recently had the veranda windows broadened to take into account his new wingspan: the bloody things kept knocking over decanters and getting stuck in doorways. You’d have thought different, thanks to their celestial provenance, but the wings had no manners whatsoever. 

“What a Dantean shit-show,” he announced to the gold-inlaid walls and the mirrored hallways empty of everything except his own reflection. 

He’d had it all planned out. He was going to make a clean breast of it to the Detective, wasn’t he? Then he’d been shafted up the unmentionables because Daddy had a funny sense of humor. Not only had he been given his wings back, but he’d had his Devil face stripped from him like Adam’s figurative fig leaf, and somehow he hadn’t managed to bring himself to confess to Chloe after all.

Of course the Detective thought he was having her on. Lucifer couldn’t blame her. He used to pride himself on being a Devil of his word, and now he didn’t even have that. 

Hellfire and Miley Cyrus, why had he gotten his wings back? He’d told Dr Linda that the wings must’ve been intended as punishment — for continuing to defy God over his own life choices, for presuming to fall in love.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t love, but the angelic version of blue balls. The Detective seemed to be the one woman in L.A. whom he hadn’t slept with — one of the few _people_ in L.A. whom he hadn’t slept with — and humanity had a long history of mistaking unrequited sexual tension for true love.

Whatever the reason, he’d tried to get rid of the wings over and over again, hacking them off his shoulders with various axes and a chainsaw and the latest power tools from Home Depot delivery, but it didn’t take. Nothing did. They just grew back, time after time. (Dr Linda had told him to stop with the self-harm, but he knew she’d just gotten tired of helping him dispose of the feathers in the dumpster outside.) 

He’d agreed to stop because it wasn’t working; he also didn’t want to upset his therapist.

And because he’d stopped, because the wings were hanging about, other things had started happening to him as well. He’d been acting like an antsy amateur on a perfectly routine stakeout because … well, _because_ …

…Lucifer got out of his stakeout clothes and threw them on the floor in frustration. Then he picked them up again, and placed them neatly in the dry-cleaning basket. He put away his shoes, and retrieved the cushions that his dramatic entrance into the penthouse had knocked off the chaise longue and put them gently back where they belonged.

Once that was done, it seemed only right to do the same thing to all the cushions in the apartment, and to plump up all the fur throws and luxury satin coverings and pile them on his bed as well. 

Then, for some reason, he decided to ring downstairs for comfort food.

It was only after they’d sent up tray after tray of glazed doughnuts and jammy buns and spun-sugar Ladurée macarons, and bowls of rare white strawberries from Ishikawa Prefecture, and arranged them in little plates all around his bedroom, that Lucifer paused to admire his handiwork …

… and _froze_.

Nesting. He was _nesting_. Like any other winged creature who had ever courted a mate, and built a nest for them with twigs and straw, and lined it with every fluffy substance known to man and also the My Little Pony deluxe catalogue. 

He flung himself on top of the massive pile of floof. 

“I am entirely screwed,” he announced into the pillows. 

One didn’t just get wings and expect things to stop there. Wings came with the absence of the Devil face and the presence of angelic virtues ― an instinct to majestically take to the heavens, a compulsive need to deep-clean, a protective streak that made guardian angels go to extreme lengths, like turning all Dennis Hopper when someone was incompetently threatening their precious charge with a not-very-sharp knife. 

Having Maze cut his wings off in the beginning of his sojourn on Earth had allowed Lucifer to set these original virtues aside. But now that the wings were back…

The very worst thing of all was this: the Detective wasn’t even his mate. Oh, of course, they’d shared a few charged moments, starting from the day when she’d actually shot him? But she was a woman who’d been hurt before and needed absolute honesty from her mate; she deserved it, and he’d managed to stuff things up entirely. The last time they’d had a proper tête-à-tête, she’d made it abundantly clear that she definitely didn’t consider him mate material, and he couldn’t blame her. 

She wasn’t even wearing the necklace he’d given her (the one he’d had made out of the bullet she’d shot him with, when he’d told her that since he’d given up all prospect of penetrating her, he wanted to celebrate her penetrating him). He’d thought it was quite a tasteful dirty joke, and she’d told him it was a sweet gesture. Then she’d gone and given the necklace to Trixie when the offspring had asked for it for show and tell at school. Lucifer groaned at the memory. 

“What in the w―, I mean, bloody damnation, am I going to do now?” 

He couldn’t keep cutting the damned things off. The dry-cleaning bills were piling up, and you couldn’t get all the blood out of Persian silk. Besides, he’d promised Dr Linda. 

But keeping the wings meant he had to also keep the spun-sugar _Friendship is Magic_ décor, and the mama bear protective instincts, and more mood swings than all the members of One Direction put together... 

…Lucifer suddenly sat up in bed. 

That was it! He was going to fix things with _shopping_.  
. 

  
  


**[3] The bonds of our affection**

The next day wasn’t escalating so much as it was outright infuriating. 

After Lucifer vanished the second time, Chloe’d had to haul the perp back to the station, book him, log his confession, and process his lockup paperwork, all without an assist from her partner. Then she’d gone home, caught a couple of hours of restless sleep before she had to get up to take Trixie to school. Since she was awake anyway, she ended up heading in to the precinct, feeling decidedly not on top of her game.

“Rough night?” Dan enquired; there was a note of concern in his voice, which meant she probably looked even worse than she felt. 

What good was feeling next-day hung-over without having had last-night party fun? Come to think of it, what good was having a partner she hadn’t wanted in the first place if she couldn’t count on him anymore? 

Suppressing an irritated sigh, Chloe turned to make a start on the pile of paperwork that she really wanted to bang her head against instead.

So of course that was the moment when a tall Starbucks cup appeared like magic, soaking a wet ring onto the cover of the topmost file.

“Detective! I come bearing gifts. Tall, non-fat, almond milk latte with sugar-free caramel drizzle, just how you like it.”

Chloe looked up. Her missing partner grinned hopefully down at her, debonair as ever; like someone who’d spent the night catching up on his beauty sleep and not at the station helping her deal with their perp. 

Then again, there was something behind Lucifer’s sunny smile, his too-shiny eyes. Chloe had seen it once or twice before; she’d never been sure what it was.

“It’s my way of apologizing for my conduct last night,” he announced. “It was unforgivable of me. It’ll never happen again.”

Chloe frowned, hyperaware that the room had gone quiet, co-workers all studiously pretending they weren’t listening to the latest gossip about Detective Decker’s love life. 

“There’s nothing to apologize for,” she said loudly, shooting a sideways glare at Ella, who immediately feigned interest in her copy of _Why Sociopaths Do What They Do (And Get Away With It)_. “Stakeouts can be very boring. Next time, just let me know if you’d prefer not to be there, so I can make alternative arrangements.”

“No! No, I wouldn’t have you make alternative arrangements on my account. I’m sorry, truly. I’ve just been having some …” Lucifer looked around, and then leaned over her desk, lowering his voice: “…some physical problems, lately, that’s all.” 

“ _Physical_ problems?” Chloe realized she’d raised her own voice when Ella dropped her book and blushed furiously and hurried out of earshot. In a stage whisper, she asked, “Lucifer, what’s wrong? You can tell me.”

She rolled her eyes over the note of concern in her own voice: so much for keeping things strictly professional, then. But she did still care about him, even though he was an unreliable game-playing man-child — he always remembered her coffee order, and her co-workers could all just shut up about the ridiculous unrequited crush on him that she absolutely did not have.

Lucifer paused before answering. “It's a long story, Detective, and I'm not sure you would believe it.” There was _definitely_ something beyond that glassy smile, a hesitation in his smooth Downton Abbey accent, that made Chloe’s heart soften despite itself.

“Try me. Really, you can ―”

“Yes! I mean, no. I mean, look, I have something else for you! Other than coffee! Here!”

He set an instantly recognizable blue box on top of the stained file. It was from an even more famous brand than the coffee. Chloe opened it cautiously, and it was every bit as bad as she feared: a huge diamond on a platinum chain, more expensive than Chloe’s car and probably her apartment, a hundred times bigger than the engagement ring Dan had got her when they were both young and just starting out and still full of so much hope. It sparkled in the office lights as if it had its own inner glow.

“Do you like it?” Lucifer’s eyes were as bright as the diamond.

Chloe closed the box with a snap, and suddenly she was furious.

“You don’t get to ditch me in the middle of a stakeout, and then come round here and bring me this insane shiny thing just so you don’t have to tell me what’s wrong!”

Lucifer’s face fell instantly. “I thought you’d like it,” he muttered, looking at the floor like he did when she’d actually hurt his feelings. Fortunately, Chloe was too angry to feel as badly about it as she usually did.

“I don’t, Lucifer. I don’t need a half-assed apology, or the first sparkly thing you see in a Tiffany store window, or you to choke to death some perp threatening me with a penknife. The only thing I need is for you to be honest with me! And you never, ever are.”

She saw her words hit home, saw his face instantly close like a cast-iron gate. “Chloe, that's not what I was ― I just happened by the store, and ― I have never lied to you?” He frowned at his own uncharacteristic stammering, then he shook his head. “But you’re right, of course. Not lying isn’t the same thing as being honest.”

“That’s not what I s―”

“You didn’t have to say it,” Lucifer said softly, and he stalked away, the light falling across his broad shoulders and perfect ass. 

When Chloe realized he’d left the diamond as well as the coffee behind, she did really bang her forehead against her desk.

Who else could she turn to for an honest perspective on Lucifer’s problems but Lucifer’s therapist? After her shift was over, Chloe went to see Dr Linda.

Linda had a lot of practice with listening patiently; she practiced it now as Chloe ran through a 2x speed recap of the past two years of her life with Lucifer: the times he’d saved her life, the times he had let himself be vulnerable with her, and all the stunts he’d pulled ― like the time he’d disappeared, and come back married, and pretended that it hadn’t meant anything.

“I know it sounds like a really trashy romcom. But it didn’t mean it didn’t hurt!” Chloe had to take a deep breath, because it still hurt. She rubbed her hand over her ribs cautiously; she’d had her heart broken before, she knew its symptoms could feel like very bad heartburn. “And now he’s acting even more weirdly. I never really understood him half the time, but now it’s like we live on completely different planets.”

Linda’s face twitched when she wasn’t saying what she was really thinking. Lots of that going around, lately. She ventured, “Maybe it’s because you actually do live on two different planes of existence. Did he explain to you how he’s really an angel?” Off Chloe’s look: "That he’s the _actual_ Devil? On a break from Hell, hiding out here in L.A.?”

Chloe huffed a frustrated sigh. “Yes, he’s said that. Sometimes I think he even believes it. Other times, he’s just the funny, vulnerable man who cares about people and tries to do his best. I used to think he cared about me. But every time I think we’re getting closer, he just pushes me away.” She swallowed: yep, really very bad emergency-room levels of heartburn. She had to force the words out. “He might really be the Devil after all.”

Linda said, slowly, “Maybe you could ask him to show you? Use your actual detecting skills. Ask him point blank: _’If you say you’re the Devil, then prove it._ Show _me_ ’.”

“I tried that. And he promised he would at first, and then he ducked out of it, same as always.”

Chloe had brought the Tiffany box to Linda’s as evidence of Lucifer’s latest exploit. The diamond dangled from the doctor’s fingers like a slice of Heaven. 

Staring at it thoughtfully, Linda suggested, “Try asking him again. It sounds as if his better instincts might be getting the better of him after all.”

**[4] The chords of mystic memory**

Lucifer had had enough of it: the flying about, the rainbows and unicorns, the distraction of shiny things. He was going to get rid of his wings permanently if it was the last thing he did.

Maze had used her Lillim knives on him the first time he’d come to L.A., but this time around she’d refused to help him with his little problem. Lucifer needed to get Amenadiel to convince her.

“I’m not helping you persist on this path of self-destruction,” Amenadiel remarked when Lucifer showed up on his doorstep, wearing the fluffy pink slippers the club had sent up for Chloe and the mirror-ball sweater he’d ordered from Amazon by mistake. “Anyway, didn’t you promise Linda you wouldn’t?”

“I did, but that was before the full import of having these blasted things made themselves known to me.” Lucifer glared at his suspiciously well-dressed brother. “Incidentally, how is it that you managed to avoid the excesses of obsessive cleaning and nesting when _you_ still had your wings?”

“Who says I managed to avoid them? You should have seen the nest of dead bats and leather clothing items I made for Maze when we were dating.” Lucifer shuddered, and Amenadiel took advantage of the moment to pour him some tea. Lucifer took a swig before he remembered he had a reputation to maintain, and made his brother fetch him some bourbon instead.

“What I don’t get is: why _now_? You said it must be part of our Father’s plan, and I agree ― this hellish SAW meets Groundhog Day has Dad’s fingerprints all over it. But where we part ways is how this is His way of showing me forgiveness. In Hell, we used to torture the damned with Justin Bieber on a loop; this is even worse.”

For a moment, Amenadiel looked like someone with a secret _My World_ CD hidden in his sock drawer. Then he narrowed his eyes. “Luci, you know the shiny things, the cleaning: it’s all window dressing. Symptoms of what’s really happening underneath.”

“Which is what? Daddy finally had enough with his evil boy having an actual life, and decided to stick the boot in?”

Amenadiel sighed. “Look, you punished evil, or at least you used to. But _you’re_ not evil yourself. Maybe our Father might have forgiven you, except you don’t seem to have forgiven yourself.”

Lucifer paused at this. “Do you seriously think I’d have any actual use for forgiveness? The Devil himself? Redemption’s for humans, not the likes of us.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Amenadiel cocked a perfect eyebrow. “We’re not so different from humans. We were part of the same template, after all.”

“Not exactly the same template.” Lucifer knew it was a bit childish, but the petty joys were always the under-rated ones. He unfurled his wings and filled his brother’s sitting room with celestial feathers that Amenadiel didn’t have any longer. Unfortunately, thanks to those damned angelic instincts, the hurt that crossed his brother’s handsome face filled him with a pang of guilt.

Amenadiel said, softly, painfully, “I crave nothing but to make myself worthy of my wings again. And here you are, desperate to get rid of yours. It’s not fair.”

“When was dear old Dad ever fair?”

Amenadiel paused before remarking, “Did you ever think this isn’t Father’s way of punishing you, but rewarding you?”

Lucifer was taken aback. “ _Rewarding_ me? What the actual f ― I mean, what in the world for?”

“Character growth?” Amenadiel asked, innocently. His eyes were dark with hidden meaning that Lucifer didn’t understand. 

His brother pressed the point. “After all, when did the actual Devil start caring about humans? Forming bonds with them, solving crimes with them, protecting them from harm? Why would the King of Hell care if any of them lived or died, let alone about anything that would put the smile on someone’s face?” Amenadiel paused. “Don’t tell me you don’t care. You might blame the six carat diamond on the wings, but one only remembers the Starbucks orders of the people they love.” 

Lucifer opened his mouth, in order for the usual flood of well-reasoned objections to pour forth. For the first time, the words didn’t come. 

There was a short, embarrassed silence that was nevertheless long enough for every humiliating aspect about his feelings for the Detective to flash before Lucifer’s eyes. The worst of it was that none of these fantasies involved how she had looked in a bikini, or out of it. It was so much worse than a Lionel Richie and Diana Ross montage.

Finally, Lucifer pulled himself together. He was the former King of Hell, he needed to show a little pride. 

“Fine, all right, maybe I did the character growth accidentally. Also, maybe I’ll regress if I try hard enough! Can I put some hookers and coke on your tab?”

Amenadiel sighed long-sufferingly. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, Luci. Passion isn’t the same thing as love. You might have sex with everyone in L.A., but that won’t stop you from loving the one person you aren’t having sex with.”

Lucifer tried once again to imagine Chloe naked in his bed. Somehow this image dissolved into the Detective in plainclothes, exhausted from a long night at work and still inexplicably concerned about him, looking all of her thirty-eight mortal years, and the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. 

He didn’t deserve to have her look at him like that, not after everything he’d done, and continued to do.

Very softly, he said, “Brother, will you help me?”

Amenadiel met his gaze. “I can’t, brother. Not if you won’t help yourself.”

**[5] One United Chorus**

Chloe couldn’t believe she was actually taking advice from Lucifer’s therapist. Well, there was always a first time for everything. 

The bouncers at Lux let her into the VIP, where one of the hosts told her Lucifer had retired early. “And he wasn’t taking visitors, either,” the girl said, wistfully, in a way that would have vaguely annoyed Chloe half a year ago, but to which she could now relate.

“He’ll make the exception for me,” Chloe said. She half-expected Lucifer’s people to disagree, but no one challenged her as she made her way to the private elevator. After all, most people didn’t know the way, and no one else had a Tiffany diamond with the secret code scratched into its side. 

The elevator pinged. The doors slid open, and Chloe stepped out into a bloodbath.

There were feathers everywhere: all over the floor, covering the polished surfaces and sticking to the mirrors and lacquered wall panels and abstract paintings. White feathers, fluffy and snowflake-plump and cottony, and _covered in blood_.

Chloe’d had enough experience with crime scenes to know better. But when her legs could work again, she rushed out into the sea of blood-soaked feathers like a rookie, shouting Lucifer’s name. 

“…in here,” she heard him say, weakly.

She barreled down the hallway, into a massive room with an even more massive bed. On top of the blood-soaked furs and satin covers, Lucifer was curled up in a fetal position, naked as the day he was ― that is, stark, mother-loving, _Playgirl_ -cover-gracing, naked.

His alabaster skin was streaked with blood and sweat, gleaming under the expensive mood lighting: everything bare under her eyes, all his large and little secrets on display for her at last. 

And the largest one of all ― she knew her mouth had fallen open, she couldn’t drag her eyes away ―

― Jutting from his nude shoulders, moving restlessly, furling and unfurling like pennants in a high wind, seeming to grow by slow increments, were huge, white, mother-loving _wings_.

Feathery wings, bloodied and damp, growing and _alive_. 

_Not_ a metaphor, then. None of it had been.

It had all been real.

“You were telling me the truth,” Chloe said. She had to sit down. 

The closest thing in the room was Lucifer’s bed; she still had the presence of mind to choose the least bloody part of it to sit on. She was shaking like a trainee on her first day on the gun range. “Oh my God. You’ve always been telling me the truth.”

Lucifer lifted his face into the light: bloody, exhausted, as if he’d been struggling with enemies all night. Still, it was uncannily beautiful, and Chloe finally understood why that was so.

“Oops,” he said, lamely. 

Chloe tried again. “I thought you weren’t serious, that it was all a joke! But it’s all real. God, Heaven, _these wings_ , it’s all real.”

Lucifer tried to smile; it was heart-breaking. “Here’s where I say, I didn’t mean for you to see me like this?” The attempt fell from his lips. Wearily: “But what I really mean is, I didn’t mean _anyone_ to see me like this.”

 _Like this_ probably meant the mess and blood, not just the nakedness. Chloe didn’t know why he was covered in the blood, or what was happening to him, but she couldn’t seem to get over this first hurdle.

“You’re an actual angel. You actually have the wings and everything! Oh my God.”

Lucifer sat up. His wings arranged themselves around him modestly, covering his ― Chloe jerked her gaze away, guiltily, and made herself look up at Lucifer’s face. 

A face, she belatedly realized, that was the picture of all-too-human misery and anger.

“I’m not an angel,” he muttered, “not any more. Which is why I didn’t want to show myself to you, not this way!” 

Lucifer drew his hands down over his face, and his shoulders shivered with effort. Chloe braced herself for another shockwave, but nothing happened. Lucifer blushed furiously and made an explosive, exasperated sound, looking more upset than ever. “Damn it, it’s still not working!”

“What’s not working?”

Lucifer breathed in deeply, making a supreme effort to calm himself. “The wings aren’t me,” he said tightly. “They’re false advertising. I haven’t been an angel in millennia, not since I led the rebellion in Heaven. I’m the Devil, the King of Hell. It’s the Devil’s face I should be showing you, not these damned wings! But I can’t. I _can’t_.” 

He balled his fists in frustration. The muscles bunched and corded in his naked torso; his wings swelled and contracted around him, the wing-tips bathed in blood.

Chloe tried, and mostly failed, to get a grip. The one thing that anchored her was the look in his eyes, a look of despair and fury, which she slowly understood was directed at himself.

She was a cop; dealing with evidence was her job. Her brain finally kicked into gear, putting together Lucifer's increasingly strained behavior, the penthouse’s new feather carpet, and all this blood.

The realization loomed over her like a very long charge sheet. 

“…Lucifer, what have you been doing to yourself?”

Lucifer looked away, into the distance. “I’ve been trying to get rid of the bloody things, like I did when I first left Hell? But this time they keep growing back. For some reason I couldn't bring myself to go down the hookers and coke route… anyway, so here I am, trying the old fashioned way again. Third time’s the charm, eh? Or maybe the thirtieth, you tend to lose track after a while.” 

He looked back at her, and in his gaze she could almost see the miles he’d traveled to return to her. “I’m just sorry you had to bear witness to it.” 

“Oh, Lucifer.” Her heart ached as if it was going to crack. “How could you?” 

She reached for his hands, and he actually flinched before accepting her grasp. How could he have done such a terrible thing to himself? But as his fingers clenched around hers like a lifeline, she realized she knew that, too. 

He was a stubborn bastard. But you’d expect that of the Devil himself.

“I don’t deserve them,” he said at last, in a small voice. He might as well have said, _I don’t deserve_ you.

Chloe wasn’t so sure about that. He’d told her he was the Devil when they first met; he’d told her Heaven and Hell were real. It wasn’t his fault that she hadn’t believed him then, or at least it hadn’t been all his fault. There had been so many things over the years, hiding in plain sight, and at last they were now becoming clear. 

He’d kept her in the dark for years. But he had reason to believe no human could be trusted, that no human could ever totally accept the truth of what he really was. The world didn’t paint a pretty picture of the Devil ― she had to remember this fallen angel was the same person she’d known for years: her daughter’s protector, her partner and friend; someone who might never be more than a friend ― because, although he was the hottest and also the dorkiest man she had ever known, and, in some weird way she couldn’t explain, he made her feel safe, she hadn’t known whether she could ever fully trust him.

Until _now_. 

Lucifer was trusting her with _this_. She had to put on her big girl pants and woman up.

When she felt sure of her voice again, she said, almost calmly, “Why don’t you try something different? Learn to live with them.” 

“I don’t think I could,” Lucifer muttered. “It’s not just the wings ― they come with added angelic characteristics. Angels do a terrible line in cleaning and nesting and fluffing about, you don’t want to think about what the décor’s been like in here lately. And shiny things are irresistible to us! If you hadn’t poured cold water on my gift, I might really have purchased the entire diamond inventory of the Cartier on Rodeo Drive.”

Chloe fought down the disbelieving laughter; she figured if she started laughing hysterically, she might not stop. 

“Don’t worry, I’m happy to save Hell’s bank balance from Cartier! Or maybe it should be the other way around... What I mean is, let me help you. Whatever comes with the wings, Lucifer, we can work through it together.” 

She squeezed the hands of the Devil in what she hoped was a reassuring clasp. “You don’t have to be afraid.” 

She knew she wasn’t just trying to convince Lucifer. His hesitant smile told her he knew it, too. _Fake it till you make it;_ that was how it was done in L.A. Chloe would need all her courage if she was going to show Lucifer she wasn’t afraid. To say nothing about convincing herself.

Slowly, he said, “You know, I haven’t had the wings in ages. They need a good deal of tending to; I think I might have forgotten how.” 

“I should be able help you with that too,” Chloe said ― because, seriously, how hard could this _tending to_ be? ― and Lucifer drew his hands away.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” he muttered, as the wings tensed and flexed around him like they had a mind of their own.

As Chloe stared, the wings began to change, growing larger and fuller and more feathery, the blood sloughing slowly off of them, until they shone pristine like driven snow. 

When she stretched out her hand, the wings’ luminescent glow seemed almost bright enough to make the skin of her hand translucent. 

Her legs were unsteady again. Here was the proof of divinity she’d been looking for for years, and not known it.

Her knees were buckling before Lucifer caught her.

“I’d also forgotten they have this effect on humans,” Lucifer said, his voice shaking, too. “You're reacting better than most.”

“How does it usually go?”

“Well,” he muttered, “there isn’t a usual protocol, exactly? Not many angels have revealed themselves to humans. Actually, Dr Linda did pretty well, she’s definitely closer to the Mary, Mother of Christ end of the scale. But, as a general rule, most of you tend to fall on your knees and, er …”

Chloe glared, and deliberately removed her elbow from the supporting hand that was definitely not helping on the not-falling-to-her-knees front. “And _what_?”

“You sometimes drool,” he confessed, in a small voice.

Well, there was definitely going to be no drooling going on here. She was a hard-nosed L.A. cop who had seen it all and wasn’t impressed by anything, even by the noticeably-naked Devil who was no longer in disguise. (Chloe wiped her chin surreptitiously when she thought Lucifer wasn’t looking.) 

“As you say, I won’t be doing anything like that. So, will you let me help you or not?”

**[6] As surely they will be touched**

Lucifer still wasn’t entirely sure how it had happened. He had tried and failed to distract himself with a cask of antique 86-year-old Yamazaki and several more exotic drugs, even though the angelic ichor coursing through his veins hadn’t let him inhale. Then he’d decided to go to town on the celestial monkey on his back. The combination of blood and regenerating feathers proved even more inebriating than PCP and single malt combined. He’d gotten really high, and he’d gotten carried away, and it wasn’t until he heard the Detective calling his name that he was brought back to Earth. 

Maybe it was divine intervention. 

Lucifer knew she deserved better than to see him like this, but he was wretched and at his wit’s end, and she was the very best thing that connected him to this world. If dear old Dad decided to take pity on him and send him a small spar of comfort, who was he to turn her away?

She’d been stunned, at first, of course, but then she had risen to the occasion, as he’d always hoped and dreamed she would. She was the most resilient person he knew; she hadn’t fainted or even drooled. And she’d made him an offer of help.

“Chloe," he breathed, already feeling drunk on the prospect of the Detective sinking her hands into his feathers. “I couldn’t possibly impose.”

She couldn’t know what an intimate act it was for an angel. For how long he’d gone without anyone touching his wings, from even before the Fall. 

“You’re not imposing,” Chloe said, softly. “You’re in pain. I want to help you.”

He should refuse. Sex was fine and well, but it was a monumentally bad idea to share this sort of intimacy with a human who could never understand. 

He murmured, weakly, “No angel would let a human help them with that.”

For a moment old hurt and confusion flared in her face. Then her gaze sharpened, and she didn’t let herself back down.

“Thought you were done pushing me away. Thought you trusted me, at last.” 

He’d never seen anyone as brave, as implacable. He couldn’t stop himself from confessing, “I _do_ trust you.”

“Then, let me help, damn it,” she said. She was offering him the one thing he had not let himself long for for untold centuries, and he was a weak, weak Devil.

He heard himself saying, “All right, then, do your worst.”

“I’ll be gentle,” she grinned, her eyes hot like a promise. He presented his wings to her, and she stepped forward and ran feather-light palms across the surface of his feathers.

Lucifer groaned. He couldn’t help it. He’d had sex with more creatures than there had been days on the Earth, but he hadn’t been touched like this in millennia. The warmth of the Detective’s delicate fingers on his wings was threatening to unman ― or de-angel ― him entirely.

Chloe looked taken aback by the embarrassingly throaty sound he’d made: after all, she’d barely touched him. She was standing so close to him that he could count her eyelashes and feel the heat of her body, the diamond he’d given her hanging between her breasts like temptation.

He shook himself. It couldn’t be like this, with him taking anything from her; it needed to be the other way around. He needed to let her have whatever she wanted from him: to let the divinity of his wings fill her with the warmth and light he didn’t have any more, to let her pluck one feather after the other until she’d stripped his wing quills bare, if that was what it took to make her happy.

“I’m sorry, Detective. That was very good. Please don’t let me put you off.”

“I’ll try not to,” she said, archly, “though those sex sounds aren’t making it easy for me,” and as he huffed out a relieved laugh and turned his back to her to give her fuller access, she reached out again and ran her fingers through his wings.

This time he managed to hold back any unbridled moans of passion. It really wouldn’t do to put Chloe off, not when she was putting her back into it, combing through the ruffled feathers in careful handfuls, sorting out the tangled tufts of vane and quill, smoothing the barbs back into place. 

It felt better than sex, better than passion. It felt like the presence of his Holy Father and the simple pleasure of walking the Earth alive. Her touch filled him like nothing ever had in all his eons of existence, the touch of a human woman whose trust he had at last proven himself worthy, a woman with whom he was completely, stupidly, all-too-humanly in love.

He could feel the slow inhalation and exhalation of air as she worked, her breath very warm against the sensitive feathers and the bare skin underneath. She touched him carefully, tenderly, as gently as she might have smoothed out the tangles in Trixie’s hair, or helped her late mother get ready for bed. This was agape, not eros: Lucifer couldn’t remember when he had last encountered it, and he knew he never wanted it to end.

When she was done, she rested her cheek against the smooth groomed surface, and he had to catch his breath.

“Thank you,” he said. He didn’t recognize the sound of his voice.

Chloe murmured, into the feathers, “They’re so soft, like a cloud! How could you bear to get rid of them?” 

Lucifer said, with a lightness he didn’t feel, “Oh, I’ve had eons of practice acclimating myself to all kinds of unpleasant things. I _am_ the actual Devil, remember?”

Her arms came up around him; Lucifer told himself she just wanted to hug the wing fluff. “You said you felt you didn’t deserve them,” she said, after a while.

“I _don’t_ deserve them, and everyone knows it,” he said tersely. “Why else would dear old Dad give them back to me? And _keep_ giving them back?”

“So you would learn something? So you would learn to live with them, maybe.” Chloe paused, and said, thoughtfully, “So you might believe that you have good inside you, after all.” 

Lucifer snorted. The notion that his Father intended the things as a reward rather than punishment was anathema to him. Besides: “The only good thing inside me comes from you, Detective.”

“Is this going to be some segue into asking me to break out my strap-on?” But he could see it, plain as day ― underneath the teasing, against all good sense, she believed in him. Believed he might deserve forgiveness and not condemnation, love and not loneliness.

Agape, rather than eros.

“I wouldn’t dare,” Lucifer said, meaning it; then realized how it sounded and amended this to, “Unless you really wanted to, of course. And even then, I’d need a great deal of coaxing, you’d really have to be gentle …”

It was Chloe’s turn to snort. She tightened her arms around his feathers, and turned her face up to his, her lips quirking, and then she was kissing him.

It was a soft kiss: lips and the faintest hint of tongue. It was like coming home to the Silver City and the pleasure of walking the Earth alive; it was everything Lucifer had imagined, more times than he was willing to admit. The press of her mouth, the curves of her body, the flutter of her eyelashes against his cheek: all of it was more than familiar ― a kiss of trust, an acceptance of who he was, the first of a lifetime of kisses a human woman might give the former King of Hell.

“Let’s take it slow,” she murmured; Lucifer could feel her smiling against his lips. “I wouldn’t want to break you.”

Who would have expected the actual Devil to be so smitten by this agape business? Lucifer didn’t understand it, but he’d always been putty in her hands.

“Whatever you want, Detective. I’m yours to command.”

She pulled away, grinning. Her eyes sparkled, and she gave his wings another quick squeeze. “Who knew grooming was so effective?”

Lucifer knew it was ungrateful to sigh, but then again, he was the universe’s most ungrateful son. “Oh, I can think of one person.”

  
  


**[7] The better angels of our nature**

Chloe woke to a flood of daylight, on the satin sheets of the Devil’s bed. Lucifer held her in his arms, clad in nothing but the white, feathery glory of his wings.

Somewhat more prosaically, Chloe was still fully clothed.

She ran her tongue over her teeth and winced. Nothing tasted like mortality so much as sour morning breath.

Still, Lucifer didn’t seem to mind. He awakened when she did, and kissed her grimy teeth and the tangle of her hair, and said, “How radiant you look this morning, Detective.”

Chloe glared at his effortlessly handsome face. He was perfectly put together as always, of course, down to the deliberately artistic morning stubble; divinity clearly had its privileges. But he seemed to mean what he said, which meant he must be wearing the biggest set of love goggles known to humankind.

As it happened, she did kind of know how it felt.

“You too,” she told him, and kissed him back. “I’ve got to say, I never thought I’d be okay with knowing you’re the actual Devil, and it’s not a metaphor for the darkness in your soul? But I am in fact strangely fine with it. We’ll work it out along the way. And it explains so many things about you, including your perfect hair.”

“Your hair’s perfect, too,” Lucifer assured her, smirking. 

“I thought you were going to tell me the truth from now on!”

“Angelic instincts only work on the big things. Tiny white fibs don’t count,” Lucifer said, and Chloe bit his bottom lip to stop him from laughing. At least he had the grace to look repentant. 

It was a miracle, the two of them lying here together in the full light of truth. She had no clue what the future might bring them, and she didn’t think he did either. Despite this, or maybe because of it, he was cheerful, and completely at ease with himself ― as if he’d decided to trust her, and whatever might be brought by these angel’s wings of his better nature.

She had to admit: this was totally like the Devil she knew.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Prinz for the beta!
> 
> Set in Season 3, the aftermath of Lucifer’s return from Vegas, before the Sinnerman reveal, and before Chloe's ill-advised Pierce romantic arc.
> 
> Title and sub-titles taken from Abraham Lincoln’s Great Speeches (with Historical Notes by John Grafton): _“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection… The mystic chords of memory… will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”_


End file.
